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The Introspective Road trip

Today I’m going to talk to you from an inspired entrepreneurs point of view. I recently got back a couple weeks now from an epic road trip with my wife and son. And at almost 6 months my son handled the ride like a champ I might add. Interestingly enough it wasn’t the sort of epic road trip like the ones I took with my mates back in the day partying through the mountains with our final destination being Vancouver for shopping, drinking, eating and of course chasing the fairer sex. Those were adventurous days where the word responsibility didn’t really exist in our vocabularies. As long as we barely made the rent and had room for beer in our maxed out credit cards, the rest was just us being Marines, improvise, adapt, overcome!

This time around, our road trip was epic in many other ways, my wife and I got to see each other reacting to minor pressure, navigating through freeways, setting up campgrounds, dismantling campgrounds, where to eat, change the baby, feed the baby, soothe the baby, and keep on keepin on. Accompanied by an array of playlists on the noise box setting the moods for conversations and laughter. I love road trips for these very reason though; you open up different avenues of conversations and dig deeper into your relationship, and coming out more in love on the other end… Well at least on my end of course.

We packed the van on a Friday morning and headed out, first stop; Flathead Lake Big Fork Montana. People have referred to Montana as God’s country, aside the smoke, it was a friendly atmosphere, an amazing lake to share with the ones I love the most. We get out of the van and sitting right where the tent goes was a couple of deer as our welcoming committee feeding on the shrubs and dipping their lips for some lake water. I knew at that moment that this was going to be a magical roadtrip. We left the next morning rebounding for a night in Lake Easton Washington, towards Grayland State Park where we spent the next three days chilling out in Westport on the Washington coast. Every day was something interesting and new to do but I’d have to say my favourite was kite flying and crabbing.

Now, I love my wife for amongst other things, her tenacity. When she wants to try something new I follow along for the ride because whether it’s hit or miss, it’s always an adventure. She wanted to fish for crabs and after an evening debacle of searching for equipment, the next day we headed to rent the equipment, got the fishing license, got our grocery store raw chicken thighs and off to a pier we went. She marched so proudly and ready to hopefully hit the record books and get her picture in the Westport Gazzette holding 50Lbs of the largest crawlers she could wrangle; the day went a little differently though… So here I am enjoying a day on our very own pier in Westport, brown bagging a super duper can of Banquet Coors in one hand, and holding my little monster man in the other. As I wait for the festivities, instead I get to watch my Nat screaming after her first catch but realizing she has to actually pick them up to put them in the can and they have long reaches!

First catch of the day, she catches one large Dungeness crab! She’s excited and screaming from happiness as well as fear. But it was worth trading the baby and beer to help her get that delicious creepy crawler in the can. Unfortunately she caught one and we forgot that our camping pots wouldn’t fit our ocean dinner, so as a gesture of kindness we gave it to the nearby couple and headed out for some delicious sea food. I think that will be an experience we will always remember. Next time though, we’ll have the big pot ready to go!

The second most favourite thing we did was fly a kite, and actually teach Nat the nuances of how to fly the kite. What some of you don’t know is that part of my upbringing was in Chile and every Sept 18th, as part of our day of independence the children build kites by hand, get our special string and it’s off to war! Kite battles; cutting each other’s string and sending your cousins racing down a hill to fist fight over fallen kites. What can I say a bloody nose or black eye was worth the keepsies! In the midst of those savage years though, there’s definitely one thing I knew how to do and that was fly a proper kite. So off to Ocean City State Park we go!

The day was sunny and there was a pacific wind hitting our faces with gusto, we parked the van right on the beach and began the process of preparing our little dollar store kite for his maiden voyage. With stringers and rainbow colours I took it out of the van and, I dub thee, Pride Kite! Without very little assistance, the powerful wind carried it high flying that rainbow coloured flag, I made the kite rise so high as I slowly gave it more line. He climbed and climbed, and I’d tell Nat to pull for a good climb as the nose aimed upwards, and if it starts to nose dive just give it more slack and let the wind do it’s job.

We were so happy, as my son sat in the bjorn relaxing and enjoying all the different and new sites he was experiencing. As I took pictures to record the moments I asked myself, “how can I strive to make our lives better then this simple yet beautiful moment?” I’ll answer this question in a moment.

As the day ended, the last two days of our road trip was for the workshop I was headed to so we headed towards Seattle; our final destination, a campground in Bellevue Washington just outside the big City.

I’ve always said that being amongst my peers, has always made me a better trainer. But this trip made me want to be a better trainer, a better entrepreneur, and more importantly better husband and father. I had recently taken on a coaching certification to add to my repertoire and because of it I was recently invited to this workshop where I had the pleasure of meeting Joel Jamieson the author of MMA Conditioning.

Amongst the professionals I was privy to, were Luka Hocevar who helped us with business and marketing advice as well as being the owner of Vigor Ground Fitness and Performance. Nate Green who was once a team member at Precision Nutrition, who helped us with business and marketing as well by putting mirrors in front of us to take hard looks at ourselves as individuals. And as an added surprise we were introduced to Dr. Gerry Ramogida, Chiropractor for the Seattle Seahawks and the Vancouver Whitecaps. Talking about the science and benefits behind joint pumping and how to apply tem with our clients whether performance or gen pop.

So going back to answering that question as to how will I improve the lives and experiences of my loved ones. I have to say, I can’t take myself too seriously as a trainer, enjoy my relationships and look forward to the experiences I will share with my clients. Empathy is a word I’m starting to understand, and revamping my clients entire training experience is the start to continuity and longevity to their education as well as our training relationship. I’m not trying to be rich, I’m loving my career path, and I’m passionate about my continuing education, because I’m passionate about teaching. I come home from work not worried about company politics now, rather I look for my wife and my son so that I can hold them, kiss them and hug them, and I know that this is the start to to improving their lives as well as mine.

I talked with my wife all the way back home reminding myself what was said, what was important to look at, or where drastic changes need to be made. The more I repeated the conversations I began to believe the changes that needed to be made in my life for my new business to succeed. Oh that’s right; I forgot to mention that I’m entering into a new partnership where our focus for all of our clients will be an entirely holistic experience from walking through our doors to possibly never leaving us, so watch out Calgary; we’re setting the bar extremely high. But I’ll leave that for another blog. I will leave you with this little question to ask yourself if ever you’re stuck where you are. “If you had a choice in life, would you take the safe ’good’ route and future if it meant doing something you didn’t enjoy. Or would you sacrifice the safe route to be great at something you love, knowing that the only way you’ll succeed beyond a safe future, is by working harder than you’ve ever had to…?”

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